


Like the Very Best of Friends

by RighteousRiot



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Very Slight Temp Play, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:54:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RighteousRiot/pseuds/RighteousRiot
Summary: They had told Nile only yesterday that over the years Joe had occasionally had to leave art pieces behind due to their size or sudden departures and that it had become somewhat of a game to go through and see what historians made of their discovery.“Nicky is naked in a lot of them,” Booker had deadpanned, falsely assuming that would qualify as a deterrent.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 294





	Like the Very Best of Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/gifts).



> Watch this account only go active every 100 years to gift a fic to Andie lol. 
> 
> This one you well and truly are owed, darling. I hope you enjoy it.

“Wait!” Nicky says, brandishing the crumpled paper. “Listen to this one – _though the artist remains unknown, it is clear he was a scholar pursuant in anatomy as an almost obsessive level of detail is present in both pieces. Figure A in particular is rendered with such loving attention to the subject’s face that we are led to further believe the artist knew the subject and was perhaps inspired by his clearly sad plight._ ”  
  
Nicky turns the paper around to show off a badly printed rendition of himself, laying haphazard across an overstuffed chair, his expression grim. “ _Sad plight_?” he repeats, as if Joe didn’t hear him.   
  
Joe laughs and his eyes spark in a way that says he found all of this highly amusing. They had told Nile only yesterday that over the years Joe had occasionally had to leave art pieces behind due to their size or sudden departures and that it had become somewhat of a game to go through and see what historians made of their discovery.   
  
“Nicky is naked in a lot of them,” Booker had deadpanned, falsely assuming that would qualify as a deterrent.   
  
No less than twenty four hours later, though, they had been welcomed by a stack of printouts from Nile’s computer. Pictures of the art pieces in question and accompanying historical analysis, marked up with her laughing commentary and bright slashes of highlighter over her favorite parts.   
  
This one had a hand drawn tear dripping over Nicky’s sketched face and small LOL written in the margins.   
  
“SAD,” Nicky says again, his eyes comically wide. They had spent the evening reading each of Nile’s print outs and were almost a full bottle of bourbon in now. Things were deteriorating rapidly. 

“Wellll,” Joe muses, drawing the word out. “Your mouth is pretty pouty.” He giggles ridiculously and reaches out as if to touch the lips in question before Nicky bats his hand away. 

“I remember this day,” Nicky continues. “You had spent the whole time holed up with your paints and your pictures and then had the audacity to insist I pose before the sunlight was gone.” 

“So you pouted,” Joe cuts in. 

“So I POSED,” Nicky corrects, speaking over him. “That’s not sadness on my face. It’s blue balls.” 

Joe laughs again and pours them each another drink. “That one wasn’t so bad,” he says. “At least they didn’t describe us as friends. Pals. The best of buddies who just happen to always be together.” 

Nicky roles his eyes dramatically, tipping toward Joe despite himself. “Whole lot of real close friends back in those days.” 

Joe hums in agreement but is clearly distracted now, taking Nicky’s movement as an excuse to drift closer himself. 

“Friends don’t do what we do,” he says, hooking two fingers in the hem of Nicky’s shirt. 

That same hand travels up the planes of Nicky’s chest, caressing him. “They don’t do this.” 

Fingers hook behind his neck, pulling Nicky closer still. “Or this.” 

And then Joe’s lips are on his before he can take the next breath. Warm sweeps of Joe’s tongue fill Nicky’s mouth, heating him from the inside. Burning him. The fingers on his neck feel possessive and Nicky wants nothing more then to belong to this moment, this man. 

When they pull back at last it’s with a gasp and Nicky can feel his chest heaving like he’s run from one side of the world to the next, can see the way Joe’s restlessness matches his own. 

“Come here,” Nicky says. 

Joe takes a last sip from his glass and uses the other hand to push against Nicky’s chest, coxing him down against the floor. The couch presses like a wall against his left side and Nicky glances at the low table to his right, Joe looming above him and all at once feels held in place. Boxed in by the desire swimming in Joe’s dark eyes. 

  
Balanced on a forearm up near Nicky’s head, Joe leans in immediately, tucking his face into the exposed crook of Nicky’s neck. Lips touch his skin, Joe’s breath hot for only a second before Nicky feels the cool bite of an ice cube pressed against his pulse. Surprise vibrates through him for only a second, echoed in the slight shaking of Joe’s body. Laughter. Heat curls sharply in Nicky’s belly, making his head spin before he has a chance to retaliate.   
  
Frosty kisses leave a numb trail up his neck and around the curve of his jaw before Joe seals their lips together again. It’s hard like before, insistent in a way that threatens to swallow Nicky whole. The ice burns against the roof of his mouth, pressed there for a breathless moment before it’s gone again. Joe pulls away from the kiss and it’s all Nicky can do not to follow.   
  
Joe nips at the tip of Nicky’s chin and finally lets the tiny sliver of remaining ice slip from his mouth. It trails down Nicky’s neck and pools damply in the hollow of his throat, leaving a flushed trail in its wake. Nicky knows that he's panting, the harsh breaths sound like rough gravel in his ears, but he can’t help it. Can’t help the way Joe’s focused stare makes him shiver, different from the ice.   
  
“Please,” he says finally. His fingers reach for Joe of their own accord, pulling him back in. Joe brushes a thumb across his lips and kisses him again, this time sweet.   
  
Asks, “What do you need?”  
  
Nicky’s hands are already pushing beneath the waistband of Joe’s jeans, shoving them down as soon as he has the zipper free. “You,” he says, distracted. He puts pressure on Joe’s lower back, bringing their hips together in a languid roll.   
  
“This.” Nicky’s fingers claw roughly at the cotton of Joe’s shirt before finally slipping beneath, bunching up fabric to get at skin. “I need you,” he says again and then frowns, shaking his head.   
  


“I _want_ you, Joe.”   
  
Joe paused, looking down at the fever bright glow in Nicky’s eyes and feels his whole face soften. Nine hundred years together and still the past finds ways to creep in, echoing back to the early years when Nicky defined his moments by the necessities needed to keep his body working. When comforts were denied as superfluous. When doing what was needed meant raised swords and spilled blood. _Need_ , back then, had always represented a lack of choice.   
  
Nicky needed Joe like that, the way he needed air and safety and the strength of his family, but it paled in comparison to the way he _wanted_ him. The way it was a conscious choice. Not something his body or his god or his leader commanded from him, but a true effortless desire, born all those years ago and brought to blaze every time Joe got near him.   
  
Cupping both hands around Nicky’s face, Joe kisses him again and again, whispering soft words into their shared breath. “I love you.” And “My Nicolo.” And “My heart. Don’t you know I sailed all over looking for you, only to have you come to me instead?” A smile creased his face. “Stubborn man.”  
  
Intensity crackles between them as all pretense of lingering any longer is abruptly dropped. Joe sits up and stripped his shirt the rest of the way off and then pushes his jeans down as far as they would go in the confined space. Nicky helpfully arches his back and then his own pants w gone, the thin barrier of his t-shirt following seconds later.

Laid out on top of him, Joe felt like a burn against his skin and Nicky groans at the contact. “Move,” he gasps. “I can’t wait anymore.”   
  
Joe rocks his hips against Nicky, slow at first, feeling the glide of precum across their bellies. It was so easy like this. Held in the cradle of Nicky’s thighs and only their hushed breaths echoing around them, it was so easy to believe that they had been made for only these moments.   
  
Nicky watches, gaze focused down the length of their bodies, at the way Joe’s hips twist against his own. Muscles jump under bronzed skin and Nicky wants nothing more than to put his mouth there. To lick at the ridges that strain low across his belly and bite at the paler points of his hips.   
  
“You’re beautiful,” he husks in a way that sounds like _later_. Like a promise.   
  
He put his hands where his mouth couldn’t reach, squeezing at Joe’s ass and struggling to spread his legs wider. He wants more, the two of them closer, inside each other in ways that has more to do with souls than sex.   
  
“ _You’re_ beautiful,” Joe stresses back, as he always does. “Gorgeous.” He grabs Nicky’s ankle and finally wedges his leg up above them, splayed out on the table. Nicky feels his heel hit one of their drinking glasses and then hears it roll away, leaking amber liquid onto the carpet.   
  
Their pace is harried now, both desperate for release. Joe stretches both arms up past Nicky’s shoulders, interlocking their hands and holding them there, driving his hips harder against Nicky. He gasps, “ _Fuck_.” The curse feels like a tear, deep in his chest. He releases one of Nicky’s hands to take his chin instead, tilts up that mouth he so adores and kisses it one last time, consuming him.   
  
Joe’s body seizes on top of him and Nicky has only a second to feel the flooding warmth, the slight tremble in Joe’s arms, before he is following him over the edge. His hips buck up sharply into Joe and then it’s over, the two of them tucked close together in exhaustion.   
  
Nicky pushes sweaty curls off of Joe’s forehead and leans up to kiss the skin he finds there. Feels the smirk crawling across his face seconds before the following laughter. “Well,” he says. “I definitely never had any other friends that did _that_.”  
  
Joe huffs and when he looks at Nicky, it’s with a level of adoration that makes it hard for Nicky to catch his breath. “Oh yeah?” he asks, playing along.  
  
“No,” Nicky murmurs, nipping at Joe’s mouth and already angling for round two. “I only ever wanted you.”


End file.
